Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lluelyn, Martin
LLUELYN or LLUELLYN, MARTIN (1616–1682), poet, physician, and principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, eighth son and ninth child of Martin Lluelyn ‘of London, gent.,’ was born on 12 Dec. 1616, and baptised on 22 Dec. in the church of St. Bartholomew the Less, Smithfield (register of baptisms). He was educated at Westminster School (Welch, Alumni Westm. p. 109), whence he was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, and matriculated on 25 July 1636. He graduated B.A. on 7 July 1640, and M.A. on 4 May 1643 (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714). Shortly after the outbreak of the civil war he joined the royal army, and attained to the rank of captain. In 1646 appeared his ‘Men Miracles, with other Poems. By M. Ll. St. of Christ Church in Oxon,’ reprinted in 1656, in 1661, and in 1679, as ‘Lluellin's Marrow of the Muses.’ The title-poem, which is a satire in Hudibrastic vein and metre upon the traveller's tales of Mandeville and others, but especially of Tom Coryate, is followed by smaller pieces, of which as an example a spirited and humorous fishing-song is given in Brydges's ‘Censura,’ x. 131. Several of them were sufficiently popular to be thought worth insertion in the subsequent additions to ‘Wit's Recreations,’ 1640 (see Mennis, Facetiæ [1874], ii. 378). His ‘Ode to Celia’ appears in the collections of Ellis and Neale. Prefixed are commendatory verses by Edward Gray, William Cartwright, and others.
Having been ejected from Oxford by the parliamentary visitors on 13 Oct. 1648 (Burrows, Register of Visitors, 1881, p. 193), Lluelyn went to London and set up as a physician, ‘prosecuting then his genius as much to physic as before he had to poetry’ (Wood). He was granted the degree of M.D. at Oxford on 15 July 1653, was admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians on 24 Sept. following, and a fellow on 27 May 1659. He published a royalist pæan upon the king's return (No. 1 below), and was very soon after the Restoration sworn physician to Charles II. In the same year (1660) he was appointed principal of St. Mary Hall, and on 31 July a visitor of the university of Oxford, in which office, says Wood, he was active enough. Leaving Oxford in 1664, he settled with his wife and family in Easton Street, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. There he practised as a physician, was made a justice of the peace for the county, and was elected mayor of the borough in 1671, when, according to Wood, he ‘behaved himself severe against the fanatics’ (Lipscomb, Buckinghamshire, 1847, iii. 645). On the occasion of the royal proclamation of 1681 the corporation of Wycombe forwarded an address to the king, which is still extant with the endorsement: ‘This addresse was delivd to his Matie by Dr. Lluellyn att Windsore upon Bartholomew day, 24 Aug. anno 1681, Mr. Henry Bigg being then Mayor’ (Gibbs, Worthies of Bucks, p. 259). Lluelyn died on 17 March 1681–2, and was buried in the north aisle of Wycombe Church. The epitaph, a lengthy panegyric in Latin, which is set forth in Wood and in Munk's ‘College of Physicians’ (i. 294), was written by his intimate friend, Isaac Milles [q. v.], who had been vicar of Wycombe until shortly before Lluelyn's death. Loveday, in his ‘Life and Conversation of Milles’ (p. 43), describes his friend Lluelyn, the ‘eminent and learned physician,’ as ‘a man of singular integrity of life and manners, and of the most comely and decent gravity and deportment.’
By his first wife, whose name is unknown, Lluelyn had a son, Martin (1652–1729), who was an officer of horse under James II, and was appointed commissary-general of the forces in Portugal by Anne in 1703. By his second wife, Martha, daughter of George Long of Penn, Buckinghamshire, whom he married on 5 Aug. 1662 (Penn register), he was father of George Lluelyn (1668–1739), page of the backstairs to Charles II, who was a friend of Purcell, and contributor to the second edition of ‘Orpheus Britannicus.’ He was instituted rector of Pulverbatch, Shropshire, in 1705, was distinguished for musical and topiarian tastes, and obtained, says Burney, the reputation of ‘a Jacobitical, musical, mad Welsh parson’ (Burney, Hist. of Music, 1789, iii. 495 n.) Another son, Richard, was a student at the Inner Temple in 1693 (Welch, Alumni Westm. p. 215; Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714).
Besides the ‘Men Miracles,’ Lluelyn wrote: 1. ‘Verses on the Return of King Charles II, James, Duke of York, and Henry, Duke of Gloucester,’ London, 1660, fol. 2. ‘Elegy on the Death of Henry, Duke of Gloucester,’ London, 1660, fol. 3. ‘Wickham Wakened; or the Quaker's Madrigall in Rhime Doggrel,’ 1672, 4to. A diatribe against a rival practitioner of Wycombe, who was a quaker. Lluelyn was also, like his friend Edward Gray, a contributor to ‘Musarum Oxoniensium Charisteria,’ 4to, 1638 (Brydges, Restituta, i. 146). There is a copy of verses by him prefixed to Cartwright's ‘Plays and Poems,’ 1651, and he seems to have taken a leading part in the presentation of plays at Christ Church, as in the minor poems appended to his ‘Men Miracles’ (p. 80) is one addressed ‘to Dr. F[ell], Deane of Ch. Ch. … when I presented him a Play.’ Another poem, probably written about 1640 and published with ‘Men Miracles,’ is addressed to Lord B. on presenting him with a play; and when Charles II visited Oxford in July 1661 a play was made by ‘Dr. Llewellyn’ (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1661).
[Materials kindly furnished by Colonel W. R. Lluellyn; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 42–4, and Fasti, i. 114; Life and Times of Wood (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), p. 324; Wood's Colleges and Halls, ed. Gutch, p. 672; Corser's Collect. pt. viii. p. 365; Hazlitt's Handbook, p. 338; Add. MS. 24487, f. 6 (Hunter's Chorus Vatum); Winstanley's Lives, 1687, p. 201; Munk's Coll. of Physicians, i. 293–4; Parker's Hist. of Wycombe, 1878, p. 60; Hist. of Shrewsbury, 1825, ii. 388; Lluelyn's works in Brit. Mus.]